ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
FREEMASONRY
AND ITS KINDRED SCIENCES
by ALBERT C. MACKEY M. D.

Browse the Encyclopedia by clicking on any of the letters below.

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R

The Hebrew letter is 7, pronounced Resh. The eighteenth letter in the English and other Western alphabets- The word Resh signifies forehead and in the Phenician and hieroglyphic character is presented as in the illustration. Compare this with the Hebrew letter. Its numerical value is 900, and the equivalent as a name of God is Rahum, signifying clemency.

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RABBANAIM

The word off, is Rabbinical Hebrew, and signifies the Chief of the Architects. A significant word in the advanced Degrees.

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RABBINISM

The system of philosophy taught by the Jewish Rabbis subsequent to the dispersion, which is engaged in mystical explanations of the oral law. With the reveries of the Jewish teachers was mingled the Egyptian, the Arabic, and the Grecian doctrines. From the Egyptians, especially, Rabbinism derived its allegorical and symbolic mode of instruction. Out of it sprang the Therapeutists and the Essenian9; and it gave rise to the composition of the Talmud, many of whose legends have been incorporated into the mythical philosophy of Speculative Freemasonry. This it is that makes Rabbinism an interesting subject of research to the Masonic student.

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RABBONI

Literally, My Master, equivalent to the pure Hebrew, Adoni. As a significant word in the advanced Degrees, it has been translated a most Excellent Master, and its usage by the later Jews will justify that interpretation. Buxtorf (Talt mudic Lexicon) tells us that about the time of Christ this title arose in the School of Hillel, and was given to only seven of their wise men who were preeminent for their learning.

Jahn (Biblical Archeology, page 106) says that Gamaliel, the preceptor of Saint Paul, was one of these. They styled themselves the children of wisdom, which is an expression very nearly corresponding to the Greek. The word occurs once, as applied to Christ, in the New Testament (John xx, 16), "Jesus said unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master." The Masonie myth in the Most Excellent Master's Degree, that it was the title addressed by the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon on beholding the magnificence and splendor of the Temple, lacks the element of plausibility, inasmuch as the word was not in use in the time of Solomon.

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RAGON, J. M.

One of the most distinguished Masonic writers of France. His contemporaries did not hesitate to call him "the most learned Freemason of the nineteenth century." He was born in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, most probably at Bruges, in Belgium, where in 1803 he was initiated in the Lodge Réunion des Amis du Nord, and subsequently assisted in the foundation of the Lodge and Chapter of Vrais Amis in the same city. On his removal to Paris he continued his devotion to Freemasonry and was the founder in 1805 of the celebrated Lodge of Les Trinosophes. In that Lodge he delivered, in 1818, a course of lectures on ancient and modern initiations, which twenty years afterward were repeated at the request of the Lodge, and published in 1841, under the title of Cours Philosophique et Interpratif ales Initiations Anciennes et Moderns.

This work was printed with the express permission of the Grand Orient of France, but three years after that body denounced its second edition for containing some additional matter Rebold charges this act to the petty passions of the day, and twenty-five years after the Grand Orient made ample reparation in the honor that it paid to the memory of Ragon. In 1818 and 1819, he was editor-in-chief of the periodical published during those years under the title of Hermes, on Archives Maçonniques. In 1853, he published Orthodoxie Maçonnique, a work abounding in historical information, although some of his statements are inaccurate. In 1861, he published the Tuileur Général de la Franc-Maçonnerie, ou Manuel de l'Initié: a book not merely confined to the details of Degrees, but which is enriched with many valuable and interesting notes. Ragon died at Paris about the year 1866.

In the preface to his Orthodoxie, he had announced his intention to crown his Masonic labors by writing a work to be entitled Les Fastes Initiatiques, in which he proposed to give an exhaustive view of the Ancient Mysteries, of the Roman Colleges of Architects and their successors, the building corporations of the Middle Ages, and of the institution of Modern or Philosophic Freemasonry at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This was to constitute the first volume.

The three following volumes were to embrace a history of the Order and of all its Rites in every country. The fifth Volume was to be appropriated to the investigation of other secret associations, more or less connected with Freemasonry; and the sixth and last volume was to contain 3 General Tiler or Manual of all the known rites and Degrees. Such a work would have been an inestimable boon to the Masonic student, but Ragon unfortunately began it too late in life. He did not live to complete it, and in 1868 the unfinished manuscript was purchased, by the Grand Orient of Franee, from his heirs for a thousand francs.

It was destined to be quietly deposited in the archives of that Body, because, as it was confessed, no Freemason could be found in France who had ability enough to supply its lacunae or missing material and prepare it for the press. Ragon's theory of the origin of Freemasonry was that its primitive idea is to be found in the initiations of the Ancient Mysteries, but that for its present form it is indebted to Elias Ashrnole, who fabricated it in the seventeenth century.

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RAGOTZKY, CARL AUGUST

A German who was distinguished for his labors in Freemasonry, and for the production of several works of high character, the principal of which were Der Freidenker in der Maurerei oder Freimüthige Briefe über wichtige Gegenstände in der Frei-Maurerei, that is, The Free-thinker in Freemasonry, or Candid Letters on important subjects in Freemasonry, published at Berlin, in 1793, in an octavo volume of three hundred and eleven pages, of which a second edition appeared in 1811; and a smaller work entitled Ueber Maurerische Fresher fur eingeweihte und uneingeweihte, that is, An Essay on Masonic Liberty, for Initiated and Uninitiated Readers, published in 1792. He died on January, 1823.

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RAINBOW FOR GIRLS, ORDER OF

A organization planned to sow the seeds of love, law, religion, patriotism, and service in the hearts of the girlhood of America for harvest in the coming years. These sentiments prompted a Brother, the Rev. William Mark Sexson, McAlester, Oklahoma, then the Grand Chaplain of his State, to write the ritual and lay the foundations of the Order of the Rainbow for Girls.
The first exemplification of the ritual wee on April 6, 1922, when a class of more than seventy-five girls was initiated. In the four following years the Order was extended to thirty-one States of the Union and grew to a membership of forty thousand The Order of the Rainbow is not Freemasonry nor is it Eastern Star, but it is very dear to each one off these fraternities.
Local Lodges or Bodies are called Assemblies, and before an Assembly can be instituted it must be sponsored by a Masonic or an Eastern Star organization that will promise to look after its welfare. Its members, girls from 13 to 18, must be children of Masonic or Eastern Star families, or the friends and chums of such children. This is the only relationship it has to Freemasonry though it has no secrets from Freemasons or Stars and they are free to attend the meetings of any Assembly.

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RAINBOW, THE MOST ANCIENT ORDER OF THE
A secret association existing in Moorfields in 1760

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RAINS

It was a custom among the English Freemasons of the middle of the eighteenth century, when conversing together on Freemasonry, to announce the appearance of a profane by the warning expression It rains. The custom was adopted by the German and French Freemasons, with the equivalent expression, Es regnet and II pluie. Baron Tschoudy, who condemns the usage, says that the latter refined upon it by designating the approach of a female by II neige, the French for It snows. Doctor Oliver says (Revelations of a Square, page 142) that the phrase It rains, to indicate that a Cowan is present and the proceedings must be suspended, is derived from the ancient punishment of an eavesdropper, which was to place him under the eaves of a house in rainy weather, and to retain him there till the droppings of water ran in at the collar of his coat and out at his shoes.

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RAISED

When a candidate has received the Third Degree, he is said to have been raised to the sublime Degree of a Master Mason. The expression refers, materially, to a portion of the ceremony of initiation, but symbolically, to the resurrection, which it is the object of the Degree to exemplify.

A curious sidelight upon the use of the expression is that obtained by considering the word as also meaning the acceptance or adoption of the candidate officially by the Fraternity. There is an ancient and striking parallel for this understanding. Among the Roman customs connected with the birth of children that was the most remarkable which left it to the arbitrary will of the father whether his new-born child should be preserved or left to perish. The midwife always placed the child on the ground. If the father wished to preserve its life he raised it from the ground and this was said to be tollere infantem, the raising of the child. This was an intimation of his purpose to acknowledge and educate it as his own If the father did not choose to do this, he left the child on the ground, and thus expressed his wish to expose or abandon it, exponere. This exposing of a newborn child was an unnatural custom borrowed from the Greeks by which children were left in the streets and abandoned to their fate (see Fiske's Classical Antiquities, page 287).

Some highly significant pictorial instances of resurrection are found in old churches. The altar picture from Holyrood at Edinburgh, Scotland (see illustration), is a good example. Here the First Person of the Trinity supports or raises the Son. Usually the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost, is also represented symbolically in such cases, the dove being as a rule selected to indicate the complete threefold unity of the Godhead. The altar symbolism from Holyrood is therefore a typical specimen of the Trinity portrayal and of the resurrection occurrence.

Brother J. E. Barton discusses the symbolism of the other illustration, the Trinity Boss in the West Porch of Peterborough Cathedral in England. This porch is from architectural details dated about 1375. Old writers would call the porch a "Galilee," a ritualistic provision for such occasions as Palm Sunday, and for processions generally on the Sabbath. The promise to the disciples, that the risen Christ should go before them into Galilee, is no doubt the origin of the name; for the chief ecclesiastical dignitary, who brought up the rear of the procession, here went first, and entered the porch through the ranks of his subordinates, as a Master in taking his seat in the Lodge.

Three probabilities are to be taken into account in considering this boss. It is the central ornament of a porch having special reference to the feast of the Resurrection. It was designed by a Gild—itself probably dedicated to the Holy Trinity, as at the Newark Parish Church, which would naturally wish the porch dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Its designers were inspired by a desire to connect, in a manner not unnatural to Freemasons with their own grades and ritual, the two ideas of the Holy Trinity and of the Resurrection.

Presumably the Masonic Gild, perhaps the chief Gild in Peterborough, was about to vault the porch it had given, and looked about for a suitable composition for its main boss. The first and inevitable suggestion was a Trinity subject, so common in sculptures stained glass, and on monumental brasses The usual Trinity is a design of God the Father sups porting the Son upon the Cross, with the Holy Spirit added in the form of a Dove. Next it was suggested that the Trinity should here be modified in form, so as to deplete a Risen, not a Crucified Lord, as being suitable to a Galilee Porch.

Last came the unifying suggestion that by the use Of a Masonic symbol the Resurrection of Christ, in the Trinity subject, should be marked at the point where Our Lord is about to be raised to Heaven by the hands of the Father; one hand gripping, and the other blessing. Hence the Second Person in the Trinity, who has already passed from the earthly Incarnation, is here at a singular position. His pierced hands show Him already crucified and rising from the grave, with the attitude common to medieval paintings of the Resurrection and the loin cloths still about Him. He is about to be raised to the sublime Degree, and God the Father, in order more expressly to note the Masonic idea, is figured like the Sun at its meridian.

What more appropriate than two figures typical of the Elect, redeemed by Christ, and raised and crowned with Him? Hence the two crowned figures, one apparently an ecclesiastic with an amice, whose diadems have the Trinity symbol of the trefoil, like the Father's crown in the Chester boss. In this Peterborough boss, indeed, each foil of the trefoil is itself trefoiled, as if to insist on the threefold notion.

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RANDOLPH, PEYTON

First president of the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Born 1721; died October 2, 1775. He received a Warrant from Lord Petrie, Grand Master of England, on November 6, 1773, constituting him Master of Williamsburg Lodge No. 6, Williamsburg Virginia. Provincial Grand Master of Virginia in 1774 and until his death (see Washington zhe Man and the Mason, Charles H. Callahan, page o54, etc.; New Age, November, 1924; Masonry in the Formation of our Government—1761-1,99, Philip A. Roth, page 31).